My Live Steaming Home DJ Studio
Friday, 23rd September 2022
I've always been interested in DJing and music. I was a bedroom DJ using a dual-CD mixer setup in my teens back in the late-90s, I also did quite a bit of mobile DJing. I then went on to work in London for some of the biggest radio stations in the UK.
I left radio back in 2016 and have dabbled a little with things like Ableton and a cheap mixer since, but during the lockdown I needed a new hobby and bought myself a Pioneer DDJ-SR2... and this was the start of my new-found love of mixing.
I was once again a bedroom DJ. Okay, not so much a bedroom, it's my office this time and its become quite an elaborate little DJ room that a teenaged me would have killed for. It's complete with a 2.5m lighting truss with four moving-head lights, a laser and a couple of other fixtures.
As well as the Pioneer I have a RØDECaster Pro which the output of the mixer runs through and gives me better control over a nice RØDE PodMic, but I also have a Kam handheld radio mic connected directly to the SR2.
The SR2 came with Serato Pro, so I'm running that on a Macbook Pro which is neatly sat on an American DJ laptop stand above the mixer, and I've got my trusty old Sennheiser HD570 headphones to monitor things. Since the SR2 has two headphone outputs, I also have a wireless in-ear monitor system connected. This means I can wear a pack, pop an ear piece in and have the freedom to move around the whole house while monitoring my output.
The Mac also runs Daslight4, which is a DMX512 lighting control application. This allows me to control all the lights in the rig via a Sushi-DS USB DMX Controller.
DMX works by daisy-chaining the lights together with what must be a massive amount of cable if it were all laid out. On the truss I have the following fixtures, all of which are properly clamped and have safety chains:
2x LED Moving Head Gobo
2x LED Moving Head Wash
1x Atomic Black Star 5-in-1 Effects Light
1x Beamz LCB252 LED Light Bar
1x U'King RGBY Laser
As well as this I have quite a bit of RGB LED strip stuck behind cabinets and the desk in the room. This is also control via the DMX using an RGB DMX controller.
The whole set up is finished off with a SoundLab smoke machine which of course makes all the effects lighting come to life with visible beams sweeping through the air.
There's also four 4K GoPro-like action cameras fixed around the rig which connect to a Blackmagic ATEM Mini Extreme, which also pulls in the audio from the RØDECaster. The ATEM has an ethernet output for internet access, but I've plugged in a WiFi bridge allowing me to stream a multi-camera mix session with perfectly synced audio straight to Mixcloud Live without the need for a laptop.
The ATEM vision mixer also has an output providing content to a projector which is mounted to the top of the truss. Usually this is used to project cool DJ effects on to the opposite wall which are fed into the ATEM from a small player which can playback video from an inserted SD card. The output of the live stream (and just about anything else) can also be rooted through to the projector at the touch of a button.
So, while I'm DJing I'm also controlling the light scenes and chases using Daslight and vision mixing the video feed on the ATEM. I have a compact 1920x1080 monitor built into the rig to monitor my camera inputs and the output of the live stream.
It's been more than two years in the making, but now I basically have my own nightclub at home. Ironically, the kit I have would be good enough for some small bars. Building it has got back into mixing and resulted in hundreds of hours of mixes, plus I've learnt how DMX works and how to program and control lights.
I left radio back in 2016 and have dabbled a little with things like Ableton and a cheap mixer since, but during the lockdown I needed a new hobby and bought myself a Pioneer DDJ-SR2... and this was the start of my new-found love of mixing.
I was once again a bedroom DJ. Okay, not so much a bedroom, it's my office this time and its become quite an elaborate little DJ room that a teenaged me would have killed for. It's complete with a 2.5m lighting truss with four moving-head lights, a laser and a couple of other fixtures.
As well as the Pioneer I have a RØDECaster Pro which the output of the mixer runs through and gives me better control over a nice RØDE PodMic, but I also have a Kam handheld radio mic connected directly to the SR2.
The SR2 came with Serato Pro, so I'm running that on a Macbook Pro which is neatly sat on an American DJ laptop stand above the mixer, and I've got my trusty old Sennheiser HD570 headphones to monitor things. Since the SR2 has two headphone outputs, I also have a wireless in-ear monitor system connected. This means I can wear a pack, pop an ear piece in and have the freedom to move around the whole house while monitoring my output.
The Mac also runs Daslight4, which is a DMX512 lighting control application. This allows me to control all the lights in the rig via a Sushi-DS USB DMX Controller.
DMX works by daisy-chaining the lights together with what must be a massive amount of cable if it were all laid out. On the truss I have the following fixtures, all of which are properly clamped and have safety chains:
2x LED Moving Head Gobo
2x LED Moving Head Wash
1x Atomic Black Star 5-in-1 Effects Light
1x Beamz LCB252 LED Light Bar
1x U'King RGBY Laser
As well as this I have quite a bit of RGB LED strip stuck behind cabinets and the desk in the room. This is also control via the DMX using an RGB DMX controller.
The whole set up is finished off with a SoundLab smoke machine which of course makes all the effects lighting come to life with visible beams sweeping through the air.
There's also four 4K GoPro-like action cameras fixed around the rig which connect to a Blackmagic ATEM Mini Extreme, which also pulls in the audio from the RØDECaster. The ATEM has an ethernet output for internet access, but I've plugged in a WiFi bridge allowing me to stream a multi-camera mix session with perfectly synced audio straight to Mixcloud Live without the need for a laptop.
The ATEM vision mixer also has an output providing content to a projector which is mounted to the top of the truss. Usually this is used to project cool DJ effects on to the opposite wall which are fed into the ATEM from a small player which can playback video from an inserted SD card. The output of the live stream (and just about anything else) can also be rooted through to the projector at the touch of a button.
So, while I'm DJing I'm also controlling the light scenes and chases using Daslight and vision mixing the video feed on the ATEM. I have a compact 1920x1080 monitor built into the rig to monitor my camera inputs and the output of the live stream.
It's been more than two years in the making, but now I basically have my own nightclub at home. Ironically, the kit I have would be good enough for some small bars. Building it has got back into mixing and resulted in hundreds of hours of mixes, plus I've learnt how DMX works and how to program and control lights.